What to Check Before You Send Customers to Your Business Website

A practical walkthrough to make sure visitors can understand your offer, trust your business, and take the next step.

Your website looks finished. The colors match, the pictures are in place, and the pages are published.

But have you used it as if you were a first-time visitor?

You know your business and where everything belongs. Customers arrive without that background. They need to understand what you offer, decide whether it fits their needs, and take the next step without getting stuck.

Before you promote your website, make sure it is ready, not just finished.

This walkthrough uses a fictional equipment rental business that supplies projectors, microphones, and portable screens for meetings and community events. Your business may be different, but the central question is the same:

Can someone who does not know your business find what they need and complete an important task without your help?

1. Make the Business Easy to Understand

Open your homepage and look for answers to four questions:

• What does this business provide?

• Who is it for?

• Where does it operate?

• What important limits or conditions should customers know?

For the rental business, a useful introduction might say:

Projector, microphone, and screen rentals for meetings and community events in [service area]. Pickup and local delivery available. Contact us to confirm equipment availability for your date.

That tells visitors more than a headline such as “Bringing Your Vision to Life.”

You can still use a memorable slogan. Just make sure a plain explanation appears near the beginning of the page. Visitors should not have to scroll through several decorative sections to discover what you sell.

Check: Ask someone unfamiliar with your business to look at the homepage and describe what you offer, whom you serve, and where you operate. If the answer is inaccurate, identify what caused the confusion.

2. Organize Navigation Around Customer Questions

Your menu should help people find information without learning your internal terminology.

For the equipment rental business, useful labels might include:

• Equipment Rentals

• Rental Information

• Delivery and Pickup

• About

• Contact

“Equipment Rentals” tells visitors what to expect. A label such as “Solutions” may need more explanation.

Group related pages together rather than putting every product, article, and announcement in the main menu.

Check how visitors move between pages, too:

• Can they return to the equipment list after viewing an item?

• Does the logo lead to the homepage?

• Are important pages easy to reach?

• Does the mobile menu open and close correctly?

Check: Ask a new visitor to find your delivery area or another important detail. Watch without coaching. Record where they hesitate, backtrack, or choose the wrong link.

3. Give Customers Enough Information to Assess Your Offer

A service name and an attractive photograph are not always enough to help someone decide.

For a projector rental, visitors might need to know:

• What equipment and accessories are included?

• Which connections does it support?

• Is setup available?

• How long is the rental period?

• What determines the price?

• Does delivery cost extra?

• How is availability confirmed?

You do not have to publish a final price for every situation. If pricing depends on the customer’s needs, explain the main factors and what information you need to prepare a quote.

For example:

Rental pricing depends on the equipment selected, rental period, delivery location, and setup requirements. To request a quote, send your event date, location, expected audience size, and equipment needs.

Be clear about what is not included. If a pictured accessory costs extra, say so near the description—not only in a policy page.

Check: Review one product or service as if you were considering buying it. List the questions you would still need answered before deciding whether it fits.

4. Make the Next Step Clear—and Test It

Once visitors understand your offer, can they tell what to do next?

Choose wording that describes the action accurately:

• Request a Quote

• Check Availability

• Book an Appointment

• Buy Now

• Call to Discuss Your Project

For the rental business, “Request Availability” should lead to an availability request—not suggest that equipment has already been reserved.

Explain what happens afterward. Does someone review the request? Is a deposit required? When should the customer expect a response? State a response window only if your business can reasonably meet it.

Then test the process from beginning to end:

• Submit the published inquiry form.

• Check that required fields and error messages make sense.

• Confirm that the business receives the submission.

• Verify that the information reaches the person responsible for responding.

• Check the visitor’s confirmation message.

• Confirm that any promised acknowledgment email arrives.

If your site accepts bookings or payments, test the relevant reservation, payment, and confirmation steps using your provider’s test tools or a controlled transaction. Include delivery or pickup choices where applicable.

Check: Complete the main customer action on your phone. Confirm both sides of the process: what the customer sees and what your business receives.

5. Check the Details That Establish Trust

Visitors should be able to identify the business and understand who is behind it.

Review your:

• Business name and contact information.

• Service area or customer-facing location.

• Hours and appointment requirements.

• About page.

• Relevant experience and qualifications.

• Customer testimonials and project examples.

Describe experience and credentials accurately. Use authentic testimonials and obtain appropriate permission before publishing customer names, photographs, or stories.

Choose images that represent what you actually provide. A stock photograph can illustrate a subject, but it should not imply that the people, premises, or equipment shown belong to your business when they do not.

For the rental business, photographs of its actual equipment can show customers what they are considering. Clear descriptions should explain any differences between what appears in the photograph and what the rental includes.

Check: Compare the details in your header, footer, contact page, and public business profiles. Correct conflicting phone numbers, hours, addresses, and service-area descriptions.

6. Put Important Conditions Where Customers Need Them

Customers should be able to understand significant conditions before making a commitment.

For an equipment rental business, these might include:

• Deposits and payment requirements.

• Cancellations and refunds.

• Pickup and delivery arrangements.

• Return deadlines.

• Damage responsibilities.

• Late-return charges.

Your business may need different information. Publish terms that reflect how you actually operate, and have legal questions reviewed by a qualified professional when necessary.

Do not copy another company’s policies and assume they fit your business.

Make relevant conditions easy to find from the pages where they matter. If delivery costs extra, mention that where customers review delivery options. If a deposit is required to reserve equipment, explain it before the customer submits a reservation.

Check: Open every policy link. Confirm that it leads to a current, complete page—not an empty template or terms for a service you no longer offer.

7. Use the Published Website on a Real Phone

A desktop preview is useful, but it is not the same as using the published site on a phone.

Open several pages and look for:

• Text that requires excessive zooming.

• Headings or images cut off at the edges.

• Unwanted sideways scrolling.

• Menus that cover content or refuse to close.

• Buttons crowded too closely together.

• Forms that are difficult to complete.

• Pop-ups that are hard to dismiss.

• Important information hidden beneath floating widgets.

Go beyond the homepage. Individual service pages, articles, forms, and policy pages may behave differently.

If possible, repeat the test in another browser or on another device.

Check: Complete the same customer task on your phone and computer. Record anything that makes the phone version harder to use.

8. Look for Basic Accessibility Barriers

Your website needs to work for people with different abilities and ways of browsing.

As an initial review:

• Check that text stands out clearly from its background.

• Keep essential information available as text, not only inside images.

• Give informative images appropriate text descriptions.

• Make sure form fields have clear labels.

• Check that videos have accurate captions.

• Use the keyboard to move through links, menus, and controls.

• Look for a visible indicator showing which element has keyboard focus.

For example, pale gray rental terms on a white background may be difficult to read. A form that identifies errors only by changing a field’s color may leave visitors unsure what needs correcting.

These checks are a starting point, not a complete accessibility evaluation. W3C’s introductory review guide explains basic checks and cautions that a website can pass them while still having significant accessibility barriers.

Check: Put the mouse aside and navigate with the keyboard. Note anything you cannot reach, identify, or operate.

9. Check Loading Behavior and Layout Stability

Open several pages and watch what happens while they load.

Ask:

• Does important information appear promptly?

• Do images take noticeably longer than the surrounding content?

• Does the page shift while you are trying to select a link or button?

• Does a background video get in the way of reading or using the page?

• Do embedded tools delay or interrupt the task?

Record the behavior rather than guessing at the cause.

“The equipment page shifts while images load on my phone” gives your website provider a more useful starting point than “The website feels wrong.”

Ask your provider or developer to investigate specific problems rather than removing features at random.

Check: Record the page, device, browser, and task for each problem. After a change, repeat the same task to see whether the problem is resolved.

10. Remove Unfinished Content and Broken Destinations

Walk through the published site looking for:

• Placeholder text.

• Sample telephone numbers.

• Empty image boxes.

• Old business names.

• Expired promotions.

• Links to missing pages.

• Downloads that will not open.

• Social icons pointing to someone else’s profile.

• Buttons that do nothing or lead to the wrong destination.

Check the footer carefully. It is easy to overlook sample links and template details there.

Test contact links as well as navigation links. Confirm that telephone links use the right number and email links open a message addressed to your business.

Remember that different functions need separate tests. A working contact-page link does not prove the contact form works. A working product page does not prove that checkout works.

Check: Record exactly where each issue appears, correct it, and retest the published version.

Your First-Visitor Website Walkthrough

Ask someone unfamiliar with the site to complete the following tasks without coaching.

For a task such as locating a cancellation policy, explain what they need to find—not which menu to open.

Watch what the person does, not just what they say afterward.

If you have to explain how to find something, write it down. That is a possible improvement—not a failure by the visitor.

Avoid using real payment details or sensitive personal information during informal testing. Use an appropriate test process for transactions.

Fix Problems in a Practical Order

Not every issue deserves the same urgency. Start with its effect on the customer.

Fix before promotion

Problems that prevent customers from understanding your offer or completing an essential task:

• Incorrect contact details.

• Misleading service information.

• Broken inquiry, booking, or payment processes.

• Unusable navigation.

• Important information or controls that customers cannot access.

Improve next

Problems that create confusion or unnecessary effort without completely blocking the task:

• Missing product or service details.

• Unclear menu labels.

• Hard-to-find policies.

• Difficult-to-read sections.

• Slow or shifting content.

Move any of these into “Fix before promotion” if its impact is severe enough to stop customers from completing an essential task.

Polish later

Decorative changes that do not prevent people from understanding or using the site:

• Minor spacing adjustments.

• Nonessential animation.

• Cosmetic changes to illustrations.

• Alternative decorative layouts.

Keep a simple record:

A change is not finished when someone says it has been made. Retest the published page and confirm that the original problem is gone.

Walk Through Your Website Before Your Customers Do

A website does not need endless redesigns before you share it. It needs accurate information, usable pages, and a working path from interest to action.

Start with one task: finding a service, requesting a quote, booking an appointment, or making a purchase.

Complete it on your phone. Ask someone unfamiliar with the site to try it without help. Then fix the most important obstacle you find.

The goal is not to make visitors admire how much work went into your website. It is to help them do what they came to do.

For more practical guidance on starting a business and reaching customers, explore From Idea to First Customers on Amazon, part of the Don Ray Practical Business Guide Series: From the Kitchen Table to the Boardroom.

Author disclosure: I wrote From Idea to First Customers and earn royalties from purchases.

—Don Ray